"The
trouble is the jazzy vaudeville-like musical
numbers are energetic but hardly memorable,
while the story is irrelevant and seems to be
there only as an excuse to go into a musical
number."

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

Rob Marshall's "Chicago" is a busty song and dance
extravaganza, with just enough of a story to keep it
honest as a musical drama. The trouble is the jazzy
vaudeville-like musical numbers are energetic but
hardly memorable, while the story is irrelevant and
seems to be there only as an excuse to go into a
musical number. It all seemed lacking in excitement as
the main stars were miscast-- Catherine Zeta-Jones was
vibrant in her musical numbers but was flat in the
acting department, Renée Zellweger as the
clueless but ambitious headline stealer and grasping
star without talent couldn't execute the musical
numbers with verve (as if to cutely prove she didn't
have talent) and failed to be winsome as a performer
who can walk the tightrope between being both a
glamorous persona and a calculating bitch, while
Richard Gere had no business being in this musical
since he can't sing and dance--and I might also add
his acting was as stiff as a board.

The film is based on the journalist for the Chicago
Tribune Maurine Dallas Watkins' 1926 play about women
murder cases she observed as a reporter, it was first
filmed in the 1920s by Frank Urson and later filmed in
1942 by William Wellman as Roxie Hart, and in 1975 was
revived as a Broadway stage musical by Fred Ebb and
Bob Fosse. This version follows pretty much how the
play was staged but without a lot of the sexy verve
the late Mr. Fosse was known for. It also lacked the
sparks to ignite the stage with a sense of cinematic
magic, as its shallow characters gave the story no
significance. I'm told that the play successfully made
the characters seem like they had more depth.

It's about two vamps, Velma Kelly (Zeta-Jones) and
Roxie Hart (Zellweger), in the same Chicago prison
trying to beat their separate murder raps while
defended by the same high-paid fancy, slick and sleazy
lawyer, Billy Flynn (Gere). The lawyer has never lost
a case and views the world as a circus, as he makes
the courtroom into one while turning his clients into
celebs. The vamps achieve celebrity status for their
passion murders and become more interested in getting
continued tabloid publicity to further their showbiz
careers than in the crimes they committed. "Chicago"
is cynical about the public's fickle tastes, showbiz
and its yardstick for talent, the media's objectivity
and the fairness of the judicial system, but all it
has to offer is its cynicism without showing it really
means what it is saying. It's played as a piece of
silly entertainment offering a flashy musical revue
showing some bare leg and is the kind of show one
would expect to see in Las Vegas but as a film it does
not become as enticing as the spectacular Moulin
Rouge--a film it tries to emulate as the modern way to
do the now seldom produced musical movies. Director
and choreographer Marshall tells a little slice of the
story and then goes into an elaborate song and dance
number, as it becomes easy to forget about the
forgettable story and just tune into the well-staged
musical number and its colorful indoor sets. Marshall
stages many of the songs within Roxie's fantasies. It
had other inventive pieces of film-making it based on
Bill Condon's script, but the problem remaining was
that the music isn't all that catchy.

The film opens in the glitzy year of 1929, a time of
jazz clubs, bootleggers, Al Capone, Babe Ruth and
Tommy guns. Velma has a song-and-dance act with her
sister, but when she discovered her messing around
with her hubby she erased both of them from this world
and was arrested after going on solo at the jazz club.
The married Roxie appears at the club the same day
with her lover Fred (West), a married furniture
salesman, who promises her he has connections to get
her a gig there. Dumb Roxie believes him but when a
month goes by and she hears nothing, she gets Fred to
nastily tell her he lied about everything and is
dumping her. In a passionate rage Roxie plugs him a
couple of times and gets her loser husband Amos
(Reilly) to say he killed the intruder to prevent a
burglary. When the dense Amos finds out it's their
furniture salesman and not a burglar, he changes his
story and she goes to the slammer. Later he agrees to
pay the lawyer's standard $5,000 fee to defend his
heartless wife.

The prison matron in charge of the vamps is Mama
Morton (Latifah--in an underwritten part tries to be a
Pearl Bailey), who is greedy and corrupt. She does
favors for pay, and contacts lawyer Flynn first for
Velma and then for Roxie. The vamps look upon jail
time as publicity time and try to keep their name in
the headlines--Velma aims to continue her musical
career with higher paid bookings than before her trial
and Roxie hopes to advance her once unpromising chorus
girl beginnings. Flynn transforms Velma into Chicago's
newest tabloid sensation. Roxie soon follows her
example and he transforms her into the sweetest
murderer in Chicago, as she steals the headlines from
the jealous Velma. Roxie views her prison stay as if
it were a stage tryout for the big time.

The film might work for those who find it both
amusing and admirable to watch the three stars try to
perform their musical numbers, as I sometimes found
myself rooting for them to make this fluff work. But
only the Welsh-born actress Zeta-Jones made it work
for me, as her sizzling movements had all the pent up
sex that kept me glued to her act and hoping for more
of the same from the others. Unfortunately, "Chicago"
seemed more suited to be a play than a film even
though it tried to keep everything in MTV-like
constant motion. The only thing is that all that
motion didn't allow me an opportunity to pause long
enough to really enjoy what I was seeing.